


cabin fever

by celestaeil, johnnys



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Lockdown AU, M/M, donghyucks great escape, housemates stuck in an apartment together, housemates want to kill each other, johnny the weed king, mark is baby, markhyuck summer fight, taeil and his plants, yuta and his secret time, yutas kind of weird
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-29
Updated: 2020-06-29
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:14:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24985150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celestaeil/pseuds/celestaeil, https://archiveofourown.org/users/johnnys/pseuds/johnnys
Summary: twelve days. it's been twelve days stuck in the apartment with mark's anime, johnny's weed, yuta's 'secret time', and taeil's plants. donghyuck's already losing his mind.maybe his 19th escape will actually work.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 15





	cabin fever

**Author's Note:**

> a co-written quarantine fic by celestaeil & johnnys. 
> 
> (it's all crack so don't take it too seriously lmao.)

It has been twelve days, seven hours and twenty-four minutes. Not that Donghyuck has been counting or anything. 

He’d like to say he’s pretty chill about the whole Lockdown Nightmare, but honestly being stuck in an apartment with Mark’s shower wail and Johnny’s dwindling weed stash is almost unbearable. Not to mention Yuta is always up everybody’s ass complaining about something, and Taeil monitors his movement like a jail warden. He can’t even go to the supermarket without permission. Donghyuck yearns for his freedom back, but with the way things are going, he’s certain he’ll die in a fight with one of his housemates sooner than a deadly virus. 

It’s four in the afternoon.

Yuta’s in the shower, Mark’s watching some anime shit on his laptop, Johnny’s shut himself in his room again, and Taeil’s in the middle of an online lecture.

Donghyuck sees his chance.

He pulls on denim over his vintage floral shirt and casually crosses the main living space in the apartment to the window near the kitchen unit. They live on the third floor, but the window opens out onto the balcony that wraps around the building and connects all of the outside stairs. There’s no way Donghyuck would make it out of the front door because it creaks on its hinges — but the window? He’s pretty sure the window has a 65% rate of success.

One last look over his shoulder, and Donghyuck’s by the window with freedom in his sights. All he has to do is open the latch, push it wide open, and wriggle through the gap. And then he’ll be free to wander the streets, or go to the skate park where he used to hang out with his friends before lockdown started. At least he won’t be trapped inside with The Worst Housemates In The World anymore.

But then Johnny plugs his electric guitar into the amp, and it starts a chain reaction that ruins everything.

“Johnny!” Taeil yells from his room. He comes storming out only a moment later with a pen behind his ear, leaving his students laughing on his computer monitor.

However, before he even reaches Johnny’s room, he spots Donghyuck with one leg out of the window and his jaw drops. 

“Don’t you dare,” he says, before pressing his lips into a thin line. 

Needless to say, this isn’t the first time Donghyuck has tried to escape the apartment in the last twelve days. It’s actually the seventh. The first time worked because of the element of surprise, but he didn’t make it past the stairs leading down to the second floor. He got caught before even reaching the door the second, third, fourth, and fifth times. The sixth time wasn’t even a real attempt; he had gotten up from the sofa while Taeil had been watching Naturewatch one evening, and Taeil had stopped him before he’d taken another step.

He’d been hoping it would be seventh time lucky, but that doesn’t exactly seem to be the case here.

“Please, hyung,” Donghyuck says, putting on The Puppy Dog eyes as he tries to squeeze through the window. “I need the fresh air. It isn’t healthy for me to breathe the same air as people like you 24/7.”

“You are breaking the law, Lee Donghyuck!” Taeil dashes over to him and grabs the leg that is still inside the apartment. “Get back inside this instant.”

“I don’t want to!”

“You have to!”

“Why?” Donghyuck whines, still struggling to free his leg from Taeil’s grasp. His current position on the windowsill is precarious — one moment of imbalance and he’ll either tumble onto the concrete on the balcony outside, or he’ll fall on Taeil and squash him instead.

“Because I said so,” Taeil says stubbornly.

Yuta suddenly appears in the bathroom doorway in nothing but a towel. He folds his arms across his chest and scowls. “Can’t you stop fighting for two fucking seconds?”

“Oh, hi, Yuta,” says Donghyuck, and tries to use the Japanese man as a distraction to allow him to escape.

Taeil’s grip on Donghyuck’s leg loosens slightly and he turns to look at Yuta in accusation. “Aren’t you going to help?”

Yuta shrugs. “Don’t really care, to be honest,” he drawls.

“But he’s—”

“Nah, couldn’t give a fuck.”

“Yuta!” Taeil says, exasperated.

Then Mark emerges from the room he shares with Yuta, and if you squint you can still see the anime paused on the screen of his laptop. But Donghyuck doesn’t watch Mark’s anime shit so he couldn’t tell you which one it is. “What’s going on?” Mark asks, full of idle curiosity. “What’s like… the tea?”

“Please never say that again,” Donghyuck says in disgust.

“Oh, you’re trying to run away again. Makes sense.”

Meanwhile, Johnny’s still jamming on his electric guitar and the sound bounces off every corner of the apartment, even through his closed bedroom door. To be honest, Johnny doesn’t often leave the door open, so that isn’t out of the ordinary.

“God, can someone  _ please  _ stop that infernal noise,” Taeil begs, staring up at the ceiling as if God will really go ahead and grant his request on the spot. 

And for a moment, He does.

“Oh,” Taeil says in surprise. The silence is suddenly deafening, and he begins to question the entire concept of religion and whether or not there is truly a God. “Well, uh… thanks, God,” he adds.

Donghyuck snorts at him.

Taeil fixes him with a sideways glare and clears his throat. “Anyway, as I was saying—”

Peace in the apartment is always short lived, and this time is no different. Before Taeil can get another word in, Johnny’s amp blares out another round of chords. Everyone turns in the direction of his bedroom door. Any of them can guess that he probably only stopped playing for as long as it took to roll another blunt and light it. 

“Anyway,” Taeil yells again, just about loud enough to be heard over the noise, “can one of you please explain to Donghyuck why going outside is against the law?”

Mark raises his hand like he’s back in one of his university classes again. “It’s because of the virus—”

“Yeah, we know, smartass,” Donghyuck interrupts. “Hyung, can you let go already? My ass hurts.”

Mark blinks. Yuta smirks. Taeil sighs.

(Loudly.)

“Alright, we didn’t really need to know,” Taeil says, “but thank you for that information, Donghyuck.” He lets go of Donghyuck’s leg only long enough to grab him by the waist instead and pull him back inside the apartment. Donghyuck flings his arms around Taeil’s neck like a baby and makes a huge fuss until his feet are back on the ground.

“You nearly fucking dropped me,” he mutters, even though Taeil did nothing of the sort. Taeil held him rather securely, in fact. His students might not believe it if you told them, but Taeil is actually the second-strongest housemate in the apartment. (He only loses at arm-wrestling to Johnny, but that doesn’t really mean anything since everybody loses to Johnny at that dumb game.)

Taeil ignores that. “Right, I’m in the middle of an online lecture,” he says, rather put out, “so I’d appreciate it if one of you could watch Donghyuck while I’m busy.”

Donghyuck is quick to protest. “I’m not a child—”

“Yuta?” Taeil suggests. He stares pointedly in Yuta’s direction, though he isn’t very hopeful that he’ll succeed in persuading him. Yuta can often be even more stubborn than Donghyuck.

“I’m still in the shower.”

Taeil eye twitches. Yuta is obviously  _ not _ still in the shower — he’s standing right in front of him with a towel around his waist and water dripping down his shoulders. He’s not even  _ in the middle of _ a shower from what Taeil can see. “But you’re already clean—”

“How do you know?” Yuta raises his eyebrows in a way that makes everyone feel ever so slightly uncomfortable.

“Okay, fine,” Taeil gives in. “Mark?”

Mark somehow manages to pout and wince at the same time. “I was kinda busy… watching my anime…” His voice trails off into a mumble at the end and he stares down at his watermelon socks.

“Can’t you watch it in the living room?” Taeil asks.

“Uh…”

Donghyuck takes that opportunity to pounce. “Oh, what kind of anime are you watching then, Mark?” he says suggestively.

“What?” Mark gapes at him, before quickly closing his mouth again. “It’s… it’s… just an anime, Donghyuck,” he says rather defensively. “I’m not… it’s not…”

“He watches Yuri On Ice,” Yuta says.

Mark looks completely and utterly betrayed. “Hyung!” he complains, aghast. “How do you even know that? I… I never even—”

“You watch it at night when you think I’m asleep.”

“No, I don’t! I watch during the day—”

“With the sound on.”

Mark doesn’t have a response to that. He’s too busy thinking about how Yuta could possibly know which anime he watches based on snippets of the sound alone. Like, obviously Yuta is Japanese, but Mark doesn’t even watch in Japanese. He watches it dubbed. 

“Markie likes little gay ice skating boys,” Donghyuck says in a sing-song tone. When Mark glares at him, flushing in embarrassment, Donghyuck sticks out his tongue and laughs.

Taeil sighs again. “Can you watch it in the living room or not?”

Mark stares at the floor. “I’ll go and get my headphones,” he mutters, and shuffles out of the room in a slump.

The noise from Johnny’s room grows progressively louder as Taeil’s patience wears away. He leaves Donghyuck under Mark’s watch and goes to pound on Johnny’s bedroom door. Yuta slinks back into the bathroom to ‘finish his shower’ while the others wait to watch the potential Taeil vs Johnny fight that could be about to go down.

“Johnny!” Taeil yells, banging a fist against the door. “Put your guitar away for half a fucking hour while I finish my lecture, or I’m never cooking for you again!”

Instantly, there is silence.

Taeil breathes a long sigh of relief. Even he couldn’t beat Johnny in a physical fight, and he’s not ashamed to admit it. “Good,” he says. “Thank you.” And then he goes back to his room where all of his first year physics students are still laughing and gossiping about the whole encounter.

  
  


—

Taeil checks his wristwatch. It has reached six pm, and thankfully Johnny’s electric guitar abomination has been at a minimum for the rest of the day. He has managed to finish teaching his class, thankfully, a group of foundation year students who are quite frankly hopeless at Physics. It pains him to see them fail to understand simple concepts, but he consoles himself that it is Friday and he won’t have to see his students’ faces for two days.

The short man gets up from his desk, turns off his computer, and crosses to the windowsill of the room he shared with Donghyuck. He reaches for the spray bottle and starts spraying water onto each of his plants in turn. (He has named each of them.)

“Could you spray any louder?”

Taeil’s finger slips and he sprays water on a small round cactus. “Oh, shit,” he grumbles, turning to frown at Donghyuck. “Cacti aren’t supposed to be watered that often!”

“Sorry you have priorities that are fucking dull,” Donghyuck drawls, lying sprawled on his bed with a iced water in one hand and his phone in the other.

“You could have killed Carlos,” Taeil retorts.

“Again, terribly sorry, but I just don’t care,” he says with a yawn.

“Maybe you should care about other people,” Taeil tells him, moving to the door and opening it.

“It’s a fucking cactus, Karen.”

Taeil finds Yuta in the kitchen, but the Japanese man isn’t doing anything remotely useful. He is aggressively whacking the ice tray on the counter, trying to get the ice cubes out. He continues and manages to free a single ice cube, dropping it in a glass with a clink. Yuta sighs before trying again.

“Did you want something?” he asks over the noise.

“Sorry?”

“I said, did you want something?” Yuta shouts, stopping the racket.

“I’m just seeing what I can cook,” Taeil replies, rubbing his ears. 

Yuta moves out of the way and reaches into the alcohol cupboard. Taeil opens the refrigerator and sighs.

“We have… a spring onion, two eggs, half a cabbage… some bacon that’s passed it use-by-date,” he states. “Plus the kimchi.”

“That stuff is fine,” Yuta says, waving a hand. “I’ll cook it.”

“I’ll pass on that,” Taeil remarks. “We need to go grocery shopping.”

“We’ll go tomorrow,” says Yuta, opening the packet of bacon from the fridge and sniffing it experimentally.

“Having that to go with your vodka, are you?”

“Don’t fucking judge me, Moon Taeil,” Yuta says, wrinkling his nose, and the two try not to fight over kitchen space whilst cooking dinner.

Mark comes out of his room some time later, practically dragged by the nose by the smell of cooking.

“What’s cooking, hyung?”

“A hygiene risk,” Taeil says dryly as Yuta flips the bacon in a frying pan.

“Taeil thinks this is expired and will give me food poisoning,” Yuta explains.

“Well, will it?”

“It  _ is _ expired.”

“...Taeil-hyung, can I have some?” Mark asks, blinking at the shorter.

“There’s more than enough rice, but the omelet is mine,” Taeil says.

“Okay,” Mark replies, and disappears to his room again.

Taeil sets himself a place at the table and puts out rice in a bowl, with the omelet on top. He is opening the big tupperware of his mom’s homemade kimchi when Mark comes back from his room with a packet of pre-cooked mini sausages.

“Where did those come from? I thought we were out of groceries?”

Mark shrugs. “It was in our mini fridge.”

“Nice, you brought those,” says Yuta, banging down a pot of freshly cooked ramyeon.

“You could have said?” says Taeil, mildly offended.

“Sorry, Mr ‘It’s My Omelet’,” Yuta scoffs.

“Okay, fine,” he replies, rolling his eyes. “But it’s not considerate to the rest of us to hoard food when we can’t just go out and buy more whenever we want.”

“Technically we can,” Mark points out. “Once a day.”

“We should be responsible citizens,” Taeil says. “We will go grocery shopping tomorrow, and then stay indoors for the rest of the week.”

“What about exercise?” Johnny pipes up, emerging from his room in a cloud of smoke.

“Can you not do that indoors?” Taeil almost whines. “The smell gets everywhere.”

Johnny shrugs, and that pisses Taeil off even more. The short man starts shovelling food down so he can return to the peace and quiet of his room. Except that Donghyuck is there. Could he ever escape them?

“Sorry, Mom,” Johnny grunts, moving to the kitchen and reaching for a packet of instant ramyeon from the top cupboard.

“Is there anything to eat?” Donghyuck questions, emerging from his room.

“Yuta and I just finished the ramyeon,” says Mark, “Sorry.”

“You just started eating,” Taeil utters.

“We were hungry?” says Yuta.

“Are you just going to eat plain rice?” Taeil asks as he looks up to see Donghyuck now digging into the rice cooker bowl with a spoon.

“I’m too lazy to cook anything,” he mumbles around a mouthful of rice.

“Have some kimchi with it,” Taeil sighs, finishes his food and takes his plate to the kitchen, where Donghyuck is now perched on the counter. “Here,” he adds, as Donghyuck hasn’t moved.

“No need to patronise me, Karen.”

“I’m not patronising- honestly, Donghyuck, I have a name,” he remarks, slightly offended, “It’s not that hard to pronounce.”

Donghyuck just makes a face and Taeil rolls his eyes, turning to wash up his dishes. He then leaves, stalking back to his room and resists slamming the door.

"He's just being a bitch," said Yuta. "He'll get over it."

"Some people don't," Johnny said pointedly.

"Oh, very good," Yuta said sarcastically.

"Who's doing the dishes?" asked Mark.

Donghyuck scoffs. "Someone can do them tomorrow. We're all stuck here anyway."


End file.
